"It is complicated when you try to preserve some other feature of a building besides its architecture," said Lisa Kersavage, a preservationist at the Municipal Art Society of New York.
Proper ratios and proportions relate each feature of a building with every other one and with the whole structure to obtain a pleasing appearance.
These sensors use light to measure every feature of a building's interior, room by room and floor by floor, to create a massive data file that captures the spatial geometry of any building.
The Princess was serviced by a freight elevator, which was an unusual feature for a building of its size, and the theatre lighting was indirect and gentle on theatregoers' eyes.
There are various architectural features of a residential building that can influence its indoor climate and electricity consumption, such as thermal insulation, window size, glazing material, albedo of building façade and orientation.
It records the basic shapes and features of each building in a bright swath of outlines and color that fills the middle register of the paper.
One of its most striking features -- in a building that consists of nothing but striking features -- is the spiral pattern that climbs up the curved sides, achieved by the slight rotation of each of the floors, with atriums, or "sky-gardens," on every level producing the spiral effect.
One of the distinctive features of the building will be a grand three-story atrium, with escalators taking visitors, who will come through the existing entrance on Eighth Avenue, upward under a skylight.
